Operations

Green Team Update

During the month of August, a record number of Green Team Fuel Efficiency Gap Analyses (FEGA's) and fuel implementation projects have been initiated and completed including:
5 FEGA's in Africa and Asia
8 Fuel Implementation projects

This brings the total FEGA visits for 2008 to 18 with identified CO2 savings of 2.1 million tonnes and approximately US $718 million in savings.

Alternative Fuel Update

IATA and the US Air Transport Association (ATA) held an alternative fuel coordination meeting in August with Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI) and major stakeholders in the field of future fuels. The meeting was a first step in a major cooperation effort to pull the industry towards green fuels.

The focus was on discussing the coordination of the various industry efforts to develop and deploy commercially viable and environmentally friendly alternative fuels. While much of the industry's effort is flowing through the CAAFI, ATA and IATA had seen a need for further strategic coordination and discussion of means of continuing such coordination through CAAFI or otherwise. The majority of the meeting involved a reporting and discussion of the various entities' alternative fuel activities.

Based on the discussions, the group identified various action items that would be helpful for the industry to pursue. The action items stemmed from the following consensus points:

Commercially viable, environmentally friendly alternative jet fuels are a high priority for the industry

Virtually all believe that a variety of alternative fuel feedstocks are likely to be needed to provide the volume needed and potential for higher environmental benefits over time

While work is already being done to coordinate industry and government efforts through CAAFI and other initiatives, additional coordinating activities will be helpful.

Some of the action items include:
Environmental life-cycle analysis criteria
EU tender on alternative fuels
Flight demos and airline involvement in certification
Data needs and data sharing
Technology readiness level (TRL) assessment
Coordination to incentive funding and investment
Alternative jet fuel implementation goals
Alternative fuels testing projects
Coordination and the CAAFI support

Flight Crew Licensing Impact

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) wants to convert the existing Joint Aviation rules regarding European pilot licensing and approved pilot training organizations (JAR FCL) into EU law. The problem is that the new regulations need to follow a set of generic EU legal policies that were not specifically drafted for aviation.

The risk is that it will seriously harm Europe's pilot training industry and also damage multinational Flight Training Organizations (FTOs) and Type Rating Training Organizations (TRTOs) that serve the needs of European airlines and business aviation.

IATA is currently analyzing the situation and preparing comments to submit to EASA for the December deadline.

Fonte: IATA 25/09/2008.